When should politicians over-rule experts?
The controversy over the dry stone wall at Whitehaven Golf course, which to my complete astonishment - and that of a lot of other people - was taken out at the request of highway safety officers at Cumbria County Council - begs an important point - when should elected but non-expert politicians over-rule the professional opinions of qualified experts?
It seems to me that when one finds oneself at odds with a professional judgement, you should ask yourself two questions
1) What grounds, based on evidence, do I have for thinking that my judgement is more likely to be right than that of the professionals in this case?
and
2) What are the consequences of accepting the professionals' advice if they turn out to be wrong, against the consequences of rejecting that advice if they turn out to be right?
On a number of occasions in my political career, where professionals thought that a proposal was safe based on general principles and I thought it wasn't based on local knowledge, I have backed my judgement against expert advice. That was in cases where I thought someone was likely to be killed or seriously injured if the professionals were wrong.
But where it is the experts who think something isn't safe, a councillor or minister should only over-rule them if he or she has very strong grounds indeed to believe that the experts are wrong.
It seems to me that when one finds oneself at odds with a professional judgement, you should ask yourself two questions
1) What grounds, based on evidence, do I have for thinking that my judgement is more likely to be right than that of the professionals in this case?
and
2) What are the consequences of accepting the professionals' advice if they turn out to be wrong, against the consequences of rejecting that advice if they turn out to be right?
On a number of occasions in my political career, where professionals thought that a proposal was safe based on general principles and I thought it wasn't based on local knowledge, I have backed my judgement against expert advice. That was in cases where I thought someone was likely to be killed or seriously injured if the professionals were wrong.
But where it is the experts who think something isn't safe, a councillor or minister should only over-rule them if he or she has very strong grounds indeed to believe that the experts are wrong.
Comments
What have any Councillor’s done about it? nothing for fear of upsetting the golfing fraternity, Lawson’s and having the Council’s and their own incompetent (possibly corrupt) practices revealed. Whenever a question is asked about anything regarding the Golf Club, all we get is nonsense spouted at us by the likes of you, Liam Murphy, Martin Jepson, Tony Pomfret, Nick Hayhurst, David Wright, Jim Kirkpatrick etc etc.
Chris
Where is the evidence that the dry-stone wall was unsafe?
Where are the accident figures to support this?
Why are fence posts now being installed? are these intrinsically safe?
Are all the dry-stone walls in Cumbria going to be removed because they are unsafe?
Chris you're like all the rest of them a gullible idiot who will cynically sit and hide behind these so called professional officers for fear of upsetting the golfing fraternity.
You are all talk no action, it is you that needs to change.
Vote for Chris, vote for the destruction of Copeland, vote for things to stay the same.
My understanding is that this assessment referred to that particular wall and not to every dry stone wall in Cumbria.
The septic tank on the existing club house is not unlawful and Copeland's environmental health officer did not think there was a problem with it, but he has agreed to check with the Environment Agency.
The post did contain one question about the Highways Officers' decision which I regard as a perfectly fair question, and a statement which I disagree with but would have allowed to stand as a contribution to debate had it not been combined with silly and offensive comments.
The question was this:
"More people have been killed or injured on the New Road by lamp posts than have been killed or injured by this historic boundary wall, have all the lamp posts been removed of course not. Why has this wall been singled out as an exception?"
As I say, a very good question.
On the septic tank, the poster says
"the only people that can lawfully authorise (give consent) for such an arrangement is the Environment Agency. The Environment Agency tell me that they have given no such consent. Therefore it's unlawful."
Answer: as you perfectly well know, the Environmental Health officer as Copeland Council has agreed to point out to the Environment agency, who are the responsible authority, the details of the septic tank at the Golf Course's existing clubhouse so that the Environment Agency can decide whether they need to take action about it.
Why are they pretending to be interested know? because they have once again been found wanting.
Everything about this Golf Course stinks of CORRUPTION and you know it.
So much so that so that although I generally delete insults from this blog when they are sprayed around indiscriminately, I would and have allowed some fairly severe criticisms to stand on this subject because there is a case to answer.
But I have no reason to believe that any of those mistakes were due to corruption, not that the officers who have been looking into the matter in the past few weeks are not making a genuine effort to sort the matter out.